A groom for the silent b.., p.1
A Groom for the Silent Bride: A Historical Western Romance Novel, page 1
A Groom for the Silent Bride
A WESTERN ROMANCE NOVEL
LESLIE HALES
Copyright © 2024 by Leslie Hales
All Rights Reserved.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
A Groom for the Silent Bride
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Cut from the Same Western Cloth
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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A Groom for the Silent Bride
Introduction
Silenced by tragedy, Lizzie Cameron has not spoken a word since the day she witnessed the brutal murder of her parents. Living under the protective care of her aunt on a desolate ranch, she communicates only through the delicate gestures of sign language, her voice a long-lost echo of her past. Despite the loving care she receives, Lizzie’s world is a solitary landscape of unspoken words and unfulfilled dreams. Longing for a connection, she feels a flicker of hope when she first sees Sam Thornton, a man marked by his own shadows. Could he be someone who can hear the voice of her heart?
Can she find the courage to claim the love she yearns for?
Sam Thornton, scarred by a youth filled with loneliness and misunderstandings, escaped an unhappy family life seeking redemption far from his past errors. Offered a chance to rebuild the failing Cameron ranch—and possibly mend a broken heart—he embraces the challenge. His arrival is met with suspicion, but it's Lizzie's silent world he wishes to change, hoping to break through the barriers of her isolation.
Can he protect her from his own bitter past?
As their lives intertwine amidst the backdrop of the rugged prairie, the return of a sinister figure from Lizzie’s past threatens the fragile bond they are beginning to forge. With danger lurking close and secrets threatening to break them apart, can Lizzie and Sam’s growing connection survive, or will the challenges they face stop their heartbeats forever?
Prologue
It was raining again. Lizzie Cameron didn’t much mind the wetness, but it meant she couldn’t play outside with her dollies, and that made her especially sad because she needed plenty of grass for her little wooden horses to eat. They would starve if it didn’t stop raining soon!
She held up her prettiest doll, the one Ma had made her from the scraps from Pa’s jacket. The doll had Lizzie’s own hair from the last time she’d gotten a trim and Ma had even given her green eyes, just like Lizzie’s. She wore a blue dress that was the same fabric as the quilt on Lizzie’s bed. It was faded and worn, but she didn’t care. Her doll was a reminder of her mother’s love, and she cherished it.
“Now, Cordelia,” Lizzie instructed her doll, turning Cordelia to look at her, “today you are to be wed! Isn’t that exciting? We must prepare the sitting room for when the guests arrive. Has Mother made the pies for the reception?”
“Oh yes, Lizzie! She has been up baking all night to get ready for today! Everything is in place and not a thing will go wrong!”
Lizzie made the voices for her dolls, of course. But she’d played with them so often now that she forgot the voice was hers.
As she walked Cordelia over to the sitting room of the dollhouse, Lizzie giggled with delight at the look of it. It wasn’t a particularly handsome dollhouse. In fact, some might have called it “rough-hewn.” But to Lizzie, it was the most wonderful dollhouse in the world because her pa had made it.
She could remember hearing him hammering away in the barn. He’d told her explicitly to stay out, but one night, she just couldn’t help herself. She ran across the yard to the door and pressed her ear against it.
“Pa!” she’d called to him. “Pa, I’m dying to know what you’re making! Please, let me have a peek!”
“No ma’am!” his friendly but authoritative voice had called from inside. “You can see what I’m making on your birthday. Just a few short days longer, my little rosebud!”
That always made Lizzie laugh. Her middle name was Rose, but she’d never really felt like a rosebud, because that wasn’t something a person could be! But soon she’d be eight, and maybe she’d have a better idea of things by then.
When the big day came, her parents and Abigail, her much older half-sister who had come to visit for the day, brought her to the table and made her put her hands over her eyes.
“And don’t just close them!” Abigail had insisted lovingly, clamping her hands over Lizzie’s. “I know how you like to peek through!”
They’d counted down from three, and when Lizzie opened her eyes, she had squealed with delight at the sight of her dollhouse.
“How did you know I wanted a dollyhouse?”
“A little birdie may have told me you had your eye on the one in the general store in Bannack,” Pa said with a smile as he looked at Abigail. Her sister grinned down at Lizzie. Abigail was twelve years older, but the sisters were as close as if they were twins.
Now, as the dollhouse sat in her bedroom by the open window, it looked even more beautiful to Lizzie. She pranced her dolls all throughout the house, getting everything prepared for the imaginary wedding. She was just setting up the altar when she heard her father calling to her from outside.
“Lizzie Rose, what did I say about you havin’ your windows open when it’s raining?”
Lizzie scrambled to her feet and ran to the window, putting her arms on the windowsill and leaning out slightly. The gentle mist of the Montana rain kissed her cheeks just like her freckles did. She looked down and out into the field nearby, where Ma and Pa were toiling away in the soil.
“But Pa,” Lizzie whined, “if I leave it closed, how will I ever hear you calling to me like that?”
A broad grin came onto Pa’s face. He wasn’t an overly handsome fellow. He was tall, but his limbs seemed to stretch out every which way. He had brown hair just like Lizzie’s, but unlike her pin-straight locks, his were tight curls against his crown. He wore the clothes Ma made him proudly, even if she wasn’t the world’s best seamstress and holes appeared in the seams every other week.
Ma, on the other hand, was a great beauty. When Pa had asked her to marry him, everyone in town told her she was cracked for saying yes. But Ma had seen what a gem Pa was, and they’d been inseparable ever since.
“Well, if you didn’t have your window open, I wouldn’t need to call you to tell you to close it! Now go—”
But Pa stopped talking mid-sentence and looked to his left. His grin immediately disappeared. She followed his eyes and they fell on a familiar man stumbling up the drive. The man had what looked like a bottle in one hand and… a revolver in the other.
Lizzie gasped. She’d seen drawings of guns in her adventure books, but she’d never actually seen one in real life. “Pa! Ma!” she cried out in fear.
But her father didn’t take his eyes off the intruder. Her mother, on the other hand, ran toward the house immediately. Lizzie watched the man coming closer and closer, and as he did, she could see him better. He had stringy black hair that hung around his chin like icicles. His beard was patchy, and his clothes clung to him as though they had never been washed. Lizzie couldn’t imagine how foul this man smelled.
She heard her mother running up the stairs, but Lizzie did not retreat from the window. When she heard her door open, she felt her mother’s touch within seconds.
“Come away from the window, Lizzie dear,” Ma told her, gently pulling her away. But Lizzie resisted.
“No, I need to make sure Pa is all right!” she protested. But Ma was too strong, and the last thing she saw was her pa squaring up to the stranger. Ma took Lizzie over beside the dollhouse and sat her down with her back against the wall. Then, she took a seat beside her daughter and held her close.
“Don’t make a sound, my little love,” Ma whispered as she gently rocked Lizzie. “The man outside is just a bad man Pa is going to take care of. Then you can go back to playing and everything will be fine.”
She could tell Ma wasn’t convinced of what she was saying because her voice was as tense as a guitar string. But Lizzie knew she should listen to her ma, because Ma was a
From her spot on the floor, Lizzie could hear the voices of the strange man and her father getting louder, but she couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Then her father raised his voice louder than Lizzie had ever heard and there was a big bang, followed by a thump. Her mother was up and screaming her father’s name as she rushed to the window.
“Benjamin!” she cried, half hanging out the window. Lizzie’s little heart pounded in her chest. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew she was very frightened. She thought her father should come up and comfort her mother if she was crying like this. It wasn’t right for him to stay out in the field with that strange man. Ma called for him again. “Benja—”
But in the middle of saying his name, there was another sharp crack and Ma crumpled to the floor.
“Ma!” Lizzie cried, crawling over to be next to her mother. “Ma!”
There was a red stain growing from the middle of her chest. Ma’s eyes were open, but she wasn’t saying anything or moving. Lizzie pounded her chest, crying and screaming, until she finally got to her feet to call for her father.
When she reached the window and saw him lying there just as Ma was, Lizzie’s head began to spin. She couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. She very nearly fell out the window and only came back inside when she heard footsteps at the top of the stairs. She whirled around just in time to see the strange man enter the room. As she tried to look at him, the world twisted this way and that.
“Do you know who I am?” the man growled. Even through her dizziness, Lizzie could see the man had tears running down his cheeks.
She wrapped her arms around herself and huddled against the wall, trying to look as small as possible. Then she shook her head. The man took his bottle and brought it to his lips, taking a long sip. When he finished, he looked at Lizzie again.
“Do you forgive me?”
Lizzie felt like she was going to throw up. She didn’t know what he meant and just wanted all of this to stop. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could. Maybe if she begged enough, Ma and Pa would come back, and this would all be nothing but a bad dream. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be.
If this was happening to her family, then Abigail, who lived the next town over with her new husband, Gordon, would come and save her. She would fix Ma and Pa, and everything would be all right again.
But no one ever came. Lizzie remained balled up against the wall, weeping and whimpering with her eyes shut as she heard the man walk closer.
“I… I’m sorry, Lizzie,” she heard the man say, “I don’t want to do this. But I must. Go… go be with your ma and pa.”
Lizzie heard one more bang and the world went dark.
***
The next thing Lizzie heard was the sound of horse hooves pounding the wet dirt. She could feel herself being jostled around gently with each movement of the horse, but she also felt very safe. Eventually, she realized someone was holding her.
Ma! Pa! They were all right! They were taking her to be well again! Whatever the bad man had done to her had been awful, but everything was okay now.
She struggled to open her eyes, and through her tiny slits, she could see a familiar man holding her. Devastatingly, it was not Pa. It took her a few moments, but eventually she recognized Martin Greyrain, Pa’s hired hand.
It took her another few moments to notice that he was crying very, very hard. She had never seen Martin cry, and the sight was unsettling. She moved her hand slightly to reach up and touch his face, but as soon as she moved, Martin looked down at her in alarm.
“You’re awake!” he cried, hugging her even more tightly to his chest. Then, he quickly added, “Don’t try to speak. We’re taking you to the doctor. Just go back to sleep. We’ll be there soon.”
It was odd of Martin to tell her not to speak because he knew that talking was one of her favorite things to do. But then she felt the pain in her neck that she hadn’t before. It was so sharp and awful that it made her want to cry, but she found that she couldn’t.
She gently lifted one of her hands up to her neck. There was something tied around it, and that thing was wet. When she pulled her hand away, she looked down and saw that it was covered in blood. Once again, the blackness pulled her back in, and she remembered nothing else for a little while.
Chapter 1
Fourteen years later, Lizzie Cameron sat in front of the mirror of her dressing table. It was coated in a fine layer of dust, but she didn’t bother wiping it off. Lizzie hadn’t cared about much since that awful day so many years ago, and dust fell under that category.
She looked at her reflection and her emerald-green eyes, once a beautiful memory of her mother, now sadly looked back at her. If she could, she would change the color of her eyes in an instant. At least then every time she looked at herself, she wouldn’t think of how her mother had looked at her as she took her last breaths.
And Lizzie wanted nothing more than to chop off her long, brown hair if it meant it would grow in a different color. At least then whenever it blew in the breeze, she wouldn’t think of the way her father used to run his fingers through his hair when he was thinking very hard. But she didn’t mind her freckles, those could stay. They made her think of her dear half-sister Abigail, who took such excellent care of her to this day.
Lizzie sighed, but as the air passed by the spot where she had been shot in the neck, it made the familiar whistling sound. She wished she could rid herself of that too, but alas, all these wishes would never come true. She would carry around these reminders of her parents and the day they had been killed for the rest of her life. She just had to learn to cope with it, as she had everything else.
There was a soft knock on her door.
“Lizzie, dear? Your water is about ready. Come on down the hall in a minute or two.” The footsteps retreated.
The voice on the other side of the door was Aunt Betsy, her mother’s spinster sister, who had come to live with Lizzie after Ma and Pa died. Betsy did a wonderful job of taking care of Lizzie and made her feel so loved, but she would never be able to replace Ma. Not that she had tried to in any way, but Lizzie couldn’t help but see the similarities.
She finished her pre-bath ritual: she combed her hair quickly, got undressed, and put on the robe Abigail had given her for Christmas three years ago. It was the most beautiful collection of pink and purple fabric scraps that Abigail had quilted together. Every time Lizzie wore it, she felt like nothing less than a queen.
